Slowly, Poems, Slowly

OK: new poem. I've been busier than usual lately, but when I look back, I can't really say what I've done. Let's see: French mid-term, putting the fall issue of PLR together (cracking the whip on the reviewers), trying to get some reading done, housework, and probably too much socializing. I've been meaning to respond to my ever-growing email box, and I PROMISE this weekend, I will (after hangover subsides from Sat's party and I've sufficiently cleaned up). I've been working on this new poem for a while, and gosh, I kind of like it:

"Dead Letter Recovery"


Take the box of letters your mother left
inside her closet. Touch the curled stamps,

the torn envelopes. There are partial letters
stopped at Hello—, or I wanted to say—,

conversations, apologies, lost. You imagine
the last time you saw her: lips sewn shut, hands

folded around the cross she swore she’d never
wear. In that box, she’s left a bone, a ring,

bled ink, paper shreds. Take the letters
and line your ceiling with her jagged Rs,

fractional Ls. Find the ones written from
the hospital where she finger-wrapped her

wrists, traced the jut of her collarbone, caught
tufts of her hair in her hand and sent them

to you. At night, braid the strands, pretend
you will send them back, receipt requested.

Brush your palms over the Dears—. Look for
her in each watermark. Invade every last room.

Find: a smudged love—, twice, a farewell—

And You Call Yourselves Writers

So, only a handful of people attempted the Opposite Poem Project. The best example was the always lovely Christine Hamm. See her poem here.

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On another note, who out there is watching the World Series? Of course, Go 'stros!

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Par-tay this weekend. I finalized my costume for my Pimp & Ho Party: cut-off denim mini skirt, fishnets, heels, human hair wig with red weaves (stolen from my little sister), red satin top w/ black lace straps, and (ta-da!) a fuzzy zebra print vest. Gotta have the zebra print vest. What says hooker more than any animal print garment (or red weaves)? Photos to come next week.

Another Verse Daily

Congrats to Andrew Gottlieb, whose poem "Amaryllis" from Pebble Lake Review (thank-you very much) appears on today's Verse Daily. Thank you, Verse Daily!

From the Publishing World

I slept in a little late today (I've had insomnia for, um, ever) and I got up to check my email and lo and behold, sitting there in my email box was an acceptance letter from The Florida Review. They are taking two of my poems. I'm pretty humbled at the moment. I'm going to go make tea and be humbled all afternoon. Especially meeting Robert Pinsky today at 2. I'm a poetry geek.

Vive L'Ink Pot!

I got my contributor's copy of the last-ever issue of Ink Pot (Vol.7) and it's wonderful. Contributors include: C.L. Bledsoe, Jilly Dybka, Jennifer Gomoll, Steven Schroeder, Sarah Sloat, and many more. Thanks so much to Beverly Jackson for putting together a great journal and supporting my work (Vol. 5 & Vol. 7) and the work of other talented writers for the past few years. I'm sorry to see Ink Pot go.

Housewifery & The Writer Inside

I have blueberry muffins in the oven (no, that is not an innuendo) and am set to read Swimming the Witch by Leilani Hall, do laundry, and carve a pumpkin with my husband later this evening. I’m working on a new poem I drafted yesterday, “Lost and Found.” I have a self-imposed writing project at hand and I will possibly post one or two poems from it when complete.

The Backwards Poem (exercise from Jericho Brown): Take a poem and for each word, write what you think is its complete opposite. For example, tree could = well, hole, shrub. Then, once you've completed the translation (if you will), sort out the poem and add your own touches, forming, etc. I’ve heard moans of “is this plagiarism?” No, since it’s your words, your crafting, your thinking. Here is my example:

Mark Strand: “The Night, The Porch”

To stare at nothing is to learn by heart
What all of us will be swept into, and baring oneself
To the wind is feeling the ungraspable somewhere close by.
Trees can sway or be still. Day or night can be what they wish.
What we desire, more than a season or weather, is the comfort
Of being strangers, at least to ourselves. This is the crux
Of the matter, which is why even now we seem to be waiting
For something whose appearance would be its vanishing—
The sound, say, of a few leaves falling, or just one leaf,
Or less. There is no end to what we can learn. The book out there
Tells us as much, and was never written with us in mind.


Amanda Auchter: “The Waking, the Window”

Night or day is nothing we remember.

We do not wish for one turn of weather or a lightning
struck tree. Our hands cup the glow of dream-making—
even now we remain in our beds long after we catch

sight of morning pulled through the window.
I watch hours roam through your body. Unable to sleep,
I walk the house again, touch walls, lampshades, bedposts.

I return to your low notes, fall through the waking,
a torn blur of sky. There is still enough quiet: the fan
stirs our skin; our limbs, storm-tossed, toss the wind,

find ground. Here, we outline in limits—me on your side,
my side, arm brushing arm. In another room, a record
spins, skips, loops back into silence.

I cannot hear that song without singing.


My assignment to you is this: find a poem that you feel drawn to, whether you love it or hate it, and write what you discern as its opposite. Then post it to your blog or on this blog using the comment box one week from today. If you post it to your blog, email me so I can link to it. Are you in? I’ll do one, too.

Good News!

The mail took forever to come today (yes, I am one of those people who anxiously await the mail), but when it did, I received the best news!

I received a letter stating that am the recipient of an honorable mention in the 2005 The Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award from The Comstock Review for my poem "Lung." Two of my other poems were also finalists in this contest, which was judged by Cornelius Eady.

Another New Poem

Still writing in a white heat. . .


The Magician’s Girl


This is what I imagine will be left of me
when I die: bones, slices of body, two parts

that will never reconcile. Halved in a box,
all spangles and boas, my fringed gold skirt.

Handfuls of dirt, glitter, a feather. I will
remember a saw in mid air, light-struck,

how my legs spun from my arms, the tickets,
the applause. The magician that tapped

the air, my rise from smoke. This is where
it will all end: stage and magic, canary flutter,

someone’s awful scream. Later, the mirror,
the dressing room, the cotton ball stained.

Graveside, even my skin is a prop—
the rabbit pulled from my chest, the harlequin

scarves of my voice still trapped in a sleeve.

New Poem

I've been doing quite a bit of writing, lately. The poem below has been brewing inside my head for months, since this spring. Comments welcome:


Gardenia

Tell me about the tattered streetlight
that hummed through our bones, the night
you pulled the gardenia from the branch.
How this stone of you (fingers tapped
the wrought iron table, the side of a wine glass)
turned your face to mine and it still meant nothing.
Your fork that reddened with lipstain, our knees
that brushed only once. Above us, a wide
branch was heavy-hung with whiteness. Tell me
how you said wouldn’t snap the flower’s woody throat,
thread it through my hair. How the bee-sweet skin
softened under your shoes. The mouth-petals
browned at the tips, gave at their stems, shook loose.
Tell me how this was unintentional: white
eyelet silks deadening inside your palms.
The night heat and bud drops, a scatter of dark leaves.
How it was all innocent: your breath at my neck,
my offer of body: moon-washed throat, the blossom
behind my ear. Tell me how I never spoke
of my husband, never said we, but only you,
only I, only the gardenias. How the fat blooms
filled my hands until I could no longer carry them.
Tell me about forgiveness: the flower’s dying curl,
(damage of a late frost), your imprints on my skin.

Blurb-a-licious

Christine Hamm, a previous contributor to Pebble Lake Review, recently asked me to write a blurb for her forthcoming chapbook, The Salt Daughter (Little Poem Press, 2006). I loved the collection so much, I thought I would share my blurb with you:

The poems in The Salt Daughter evoke a fairy tale world that is anything but. In this startling collection, children break off bits of their mother and are left with throats drawn in thirst. The mother is made of twigs, lives under the bed like a nightmare, sings inside their bodies. She’s so small I can fit my tongue all the way around her neck. Hamm’s familial explorations are daring, often tragic, and the poems are the “dark star” we willingly sail towards.

Christine: I'm so excited for you!

The Fine Art of Reading Guidelines

At Pebble Lake Review, we've been getting a LOT of people sending in their manuscripts and then emailing us either the same day or days later saying "oops, I need to make edits. Change blah blah blah" or will simply send a new version or versions in some cases. Let me make this clear: proof your work before sending it to any editor or magazine. Most magazines have too great a volume of submissions to make the edits for you (I absolutely will not) or dig through the slush to swap out your old submission. Am I being too harsh? I just think it will save everyone a lot of time and trouble if people will read the guidelines carefully and make all changes to their work before sending it out. I mean, why send out something half-assed anyway? It just embarrasses you later.

50/50

Yesterday, I got a nice little form rejection from The Sun. I love that magazine, but they are SO hard to get into. Today, however, I got an acceptance letter for two of my poems from Primavera, which is a literary magazine specializing in women. I'm excited about it because they have a pretty good press run (1,000 copies/issue) and out of the 1,000+ submissions they receive, they only accept 25 poems. Very cool indeed.

Books for Review

Pebble Lake Review is seeking reviewers for these titles:

The Book of Funnels by Christian Hawkey

Late Wife by Claudia Emerson

Present Company by W.S. Merwin

The Commandrine And Other Poems by Joyelle McSweeney

The Opening Question by Prageeta Sharma

Distant Early Warning by Rad Smith

Locket by Catherine Daly

Postcards from the Interior by Wyn Cooper

Fallen from a Chariot by Kevin Prufer

Needlegrass by Dennis Sampson

Cathedral of Wish by Cammy Thomas


If you are interested, please send a short bio (publication credits, previous reviewing experience, etc.) to me.

This is one of two potential covers for my chapbook.  

You know you live on the Gulf Coast when:

1. You have FEMA's number on your speed dialer.
2. You have more than 300 C and D batteries in your kitchen drawer.
3. Your pantry contains more than 20 cans of Spaghetti Os.
4. You are thinking of repainting your house to match the plywood covering your windows.
5. When describing your house to a prospective buyer, you say it has three bedrooms, two baths and one safe hallway.
6. You are on a first-name basis with the cashier at Home Depot.
7. You are delighted to pay $3 for a gallon of regular unleaded.
8. The road leading to your house has been declared a No-Wake Zone.
9. You decide that your patio furniture looks better on the bottom of the pool.
10. You own more than three large coolers.
11. You can wish that other people get hit by a hurricane and not feelthe least bit guilty about it. 12. You rationalize helping a friend board up by thinking "It'll only take a gallon of gas to get there and back."
13. You have 2-liter coke bottles and milk jugs filled with water in your freezer.
14. Three months ago you couldn't hang a shower curtain; today you can assemble a portable generator by candlelight.
15. You catch a 13-pound redfish. In your driveway.
16. You can recite from memory whole portions of your homeowner's insurance policy.
17. At cocktail parties, women are attracted to the guy with the biggest chainsaw.
18. You have had tuna fish more than 5 days in a row.
19. There is a roll of tar paper in your garage.
20. You can rattle off the names of three or more meteorologists whowork at the Weather Channel.
21. Someone comes to your door to tell you they found your roof.
22. Ice is a valid topic of conversation.
23. Your "drive-thru" meal consists of MRE's and bottled water.
24. Relocating to South Dakota does not seem like such a crazy idea.
25. You spend more time on your roof then in your living room.
26. You've been laughed at over the phone by a roofer, fence builder ora tree worker.
27. A battery powered TV is considered a home entertainment center.
28. You don't worry about relatives wanting to visit during the summer.
29. Your child's first words are "hunker down" and you didn't go to Ole Miss!
30. Having a tree in your living room does not necessarily mean it's Christmas.
31. Toilet Paper is elevated to coin of the realm at the shelters.
32. You know the difference between the "good side" of a storm and the"bad side."
33. You go to work early and stay late just to enjoy the airconditioning.